Music Links from Mr. Levy

8/14/2017

WELCOME TO MY MUSIC PAGE!
Email me at james.levy@dc.gov if you have any questions or comments.

During AY 2016-2017 I developed this keyboard curriculum for DCPS as an Arts Enrichment Fellow, check it our and work on the material at home. Also for my participation, L-T received 24 keyboards from DCPS! Watch!

A very limited number of keyboards are now available to take home, email me.

Here are the Lyrics for classes with my commentary on the songs and links to keyboard parts .

My teaching philosophy is based on my belief that performing music acts as a general cognitive/perceptual tune up.

The first step is building the habit of paying attention, a specific example of teaching our students self-control. The conducting activity which I use to open most classes helps the students to learn self control by giving them an observable activity that allows me, the teacher, to see who is paying attention and for how long. I am inspired to do this by the astonishing results of the Stanford Marshmallow Test. Here is my remix of a PBS News Hour report on that study.

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Mr. Levy

I started playing the piano by watching my Dad. He was an intermediate player, since he only started playing in his 40s, but I there he was, right in front of me, playing for real! He played some of the same pieces over and over, and I was able to notice what keys he played. Eventually I could play a bit from watching him. In 2nd grade I started taking actual piano lessons. In 6th grade we lived in London for a year and I couldn’t go outside and “play” like I did in Maryland, so I practiced the piano with my Songs of the 60s Songbook (it was 1971). I Wanna Hold Your Hand, Satisfaction, Spinning Wheel, Ode to Billy Joe...

Back in Bethesda for 7th grade I found my first real independent musical love, Elton John. From my family I already had the Beatles, Motown, especially the Supremes, Louis Armstrong, Laura Nyro, Broadway Musicals, but Elton—or Smell-ton as my older brother dubbed him, was mine. Then in 9th grade a friend introduced me to the music of Charlie Parker and we cheerfully butchered it in a jazz combo which practiced during concert band time two days a week.

I played in Jazz Band every single day of High School, Count Basie, Thad Jones/Mel Lewis, Hank Levy. In 11th grade my parents let me play in a blues band with a bunch of adults and I started doing gigs.

After high school I went to Berklee College of Music for two years, then GWU for two years, graduated Phi Beta Kappa and was hired by GWU to be a piano teacher. At UMCP I did a Master’s in Music, with a thesis on Dizzy Gillespie. For over twenty years I combined teaching college with being a church organist/choir director. I started teaching part-time for DCPS 10 years ago when my younger daughter went off to college.

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